February 10, 2011
Elephant in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

The fifth day of my safari in Tanzania was a transition day from Ngorongoro Crater to Serengeti National Park, and it included a spectacular surprise.

While on the usually-boring drive from Ngorongoro Crater to Oldupai Gorge, where Louis and Mary Leakey made their famous discoveries of early hominids, I spotted an unusual animal at the edge of a clearing. I asked our guide if it was a jackal, and he said it was a caracal! I'm not surprised if you aren't familiar with caracals. These small cats are extremely rare to see. It was the first one that I had seen in the wild and only the sixth that our guide had seen in his 11 years of guiding! It was too far away to photograph, but it was a thrill to watch it through binoculars until it disappeared into the brush.

After visiting Oldupai Gorge and then a Maasai village, we entered Serengeti National Park shortly before noon. By around 3:00, we saw our first cheetah. It was in a fairly good location and my clients were thrilled to have a good opportunity to photograph it. My favorite image of the day is of a young elephant playing in a water hole. Young elephants just seem so happy when they play, it's always a joy to watch and photograph.